Theatre Materials/Materials Theatre conference- Central School, 17/4/08

this conference at central school of speech and drama was excellent- apart from the horrific scheduling which meant you could hardly see that much of it :( starting with an opening address by anne bogart examining her ideas about the theme of the conference. i have made copious notes about the whole day but am just extracting (she says) key thoughts that i found interesting;
anne bogart said that you mustn't over technolgize theatre as it makes it in danger of losing its spirit, and that its the materiality of theatre that wants to kill it. (temporality- as in my practice i sit between the fine art ethos of 'object' and the theatre ethos of ephemerality...)

the object presence absence panel discussions looking at rich allen's case- at the performing bio-object- objects embodying emotion. good to meet rich and kasia :) there was also a speaker, nesreen hussein who was talking about a piece called body parts, 2001 that i can't find any images or references to online. interesting idea like the headless pier family you can put yourself into at the seaside- except this was in a gallery with bodies pushed through sections of a wall making an apparent unified whole on the otherside. raised issue of interaction- don't touch when bodies become sculptures in a gallery but people think they can as its a live body.

the part most related to my practice (and to help me as i'm currently writing my research paper) was the audience members body as theatre material panel discussion, described as being about participation, non-proscenium arch theatre, and how this is a big feature of my work i popped along..to find rebecca and andrew (french mottershead (their own site is down?) we did the group project with last term) on the panel, nice surprise to see them, and to be honest much needed as the camp was very centred on theatre practioners dissolving the 'arch' whereas rebecca and andrew have an art practice in which it never existed.

there were questions the chair posed; (its was very difficult to work out who was who in this discussion so these notes will have to be rough and are only what i understood from the discussion-disclaimer! and purely written here for my research)

1. why collapse the distance between the audience and performer- why not have the proscenium arch?

answers ranged from rebecca saying they don't collapse it, the only performers are participants transforming social rituals, added by andrew that the work is democratic.
a dance-theatre practioner talked about using participation as a form of theatre which embarks on a thematic exploration of body language, bored with audiences sat on chairs, and allowing for a more direct gaze with each audience member through collapsing the physical boundaries with strangers. thinking about what happens when the performer now does the watching.this was more at the softer end of participation they said, absorbing the audience member into the work, manipulating their body?
qs came up about why its happening, now. political and cultural climate of social networking, asking for feedback, cultural resonance of widening participation. we are being, and getting more involved in culture generally and arts practice is showing this trend?

participatory work is becoming both physically and mentally participatory. one person talked about the notion of performance over workshop- people pay more for a workshop than a show- should we do more workshops?!

2. What skills do performers who work in this field need that is different to normal performances?
punchdrunk- one-to one- intimate performances. this is a different quality of performance-perfomers need to be open and inviting and be physically close than projecting.performer is more vulnerable. performers needing to be clear with touch and what its means, be able to respond to confrontation.
others- why do it? its fun. it doesn't feel like theatre but a really special workshop, or maybe its the space in between a workshop and a performance.
andrew- often work with epople with no performance skills, so using skills from the everyday- people are already experts. exaggerating, subverting the everyday making people more aware.
others- have to be able to read people well, handle the unexpected, accidental, proposed, making it true to the dramaturgy.have to place a mental proscenium arch bach sometimes. you have to be able get people to trust you.manipulating the audience member, reversing the process, bodies entering a landscape (dancers)


3. How do you work with space? Where's the theatre?

the space dictates the text- audience takes same journey as actors in the text. difficult to go back into a black box once gone out to site.
rebecca- work in daily life, meeting places.
punchdrunk- site becomes a set as real as possible like BAC, theatrical, entering a world on a giant scale.heightened space. people stop paying attention to each other- masks, eliminate audience on mass as social presence- don't notice self but the space and performers- (unless unmasked in an individual performance where you become yourself again.)

andrew+rebecca- difference between interaction and participation.is being led down a corridor participatory- isnt this still like a seated audience? participation involves subjective engagement, collaboration, chance to re-invent.

[my note- is punchdrunk participatory? one way v two way street= with me it felt like a one way street- i wholeheartedly agree with rebecca and andrew on this interaction v participation debate]

much of this discussion seemed more about manipulation interaction, and a mis-use of the term participation. isn't this theatre puppetry?? also-sensory rather than mental alert. participation is about the individual.


my thoughts;
this panel discussion seemed to me, lack a balanced view across the subject and seemed to vastly mis-understand what the term participation actually means.but the focus of the panel discussion was about theatre..i would very much like to find out if there truly is practice that is participatory within theatre or its more about art practice (tim crouch- although actors read their script in oak tree , do they have input to change it?)

need to think about this issues discussed here. about finalising ideas about site of my MA show, level of participation and why. am in blog overload today!

Press release- The Space-in-Between show

so here's the press release for the show laura and i are in on the 26th april.

please do email me to make an appointment for the first part asap-
numbers strictly limited!

Press Release 55 Leroy St: Further Investigations 55 Leroy Street, London SE1 Saturday 26 April 2008, 3 – 6pm, with a live performance at 8pm

Laura Bean & Harriet Poole / Linda Duffy / Dave Miller / Lucy Rimmer / Caroline Smith / Sally Thompson / Senaka Weeraman

55 Leroy St: Further Investigations presents further explorations into the physical traces left by the previous occupants of 55 Leroy St and the associated real and imagined histories. Further Investigations takes place on the afternoon of Saturday 26 April 3-6pm. It is a series of experimental projects presented as work-in-progress. Audience members are invited to participate, to discuss work with the creators and to feedback into the creative process.

Laura Bean and Harriet Poole are working with site-specific performance art to explore the fictive and real histories surrounding the site at 55 Leroy St. They will be deconstructing factory processes whilst simultaneously exploiting photography in a performative manner. Audience members are invited to participate and surrender unwanted home furnishings / clothing to help facilitate the performance and leave new traces of occupation.

3- 5.00 By appointment - please email harrietpoole@gmail.com to arrange.

5 - 5.30 Performance open to all

5.30 - 6 Installation

Linda Duffy explores physical traces left by time and people on the surface of the building and presents a visualisation of the documented history of the building.

Dave Miller is using the space at Leroy Street to experiment with networked collaborative stories. The Leroy Club was a legendary venue in the 1950's comedy circuit, where many famous comedians started out. One of these was Buddy Rivers, who's returned to do this benefit performance to help save the venue. He hasn't done standup for years and fears he's lost his edge, so now uses computer programs and Internet searches to generate his jokes. Join in the show at the Leroy on Saturday 26 April 3-6pm or online at: http://davemiller.org/experiments/buddy_rivers_leroy

Lucy Rimmer creates images capturing the microscopic traces left by time on the windows, floors, walls and ceilings of the space at 55 Leroy St. Experimenting with photographic techniques she takes away the context and scale of the building itself and forces us to look in more detail at the many layers that constitute to the history of the space.

Caroline Smith performs Spank at 8pm.

I tell stories. I remember. I embellish. Sometimes I lie. Spank follows the journeys of two women as they reveal stories from private and public sources set apart by two centuries. It investigates notions of 'faction' and what is filtered out historically within a theme of female trauma and the body. It is deeply personal work, yet also rooted in its cultural context. Spank reacts to the location and has been performed at Tramway in Glasgow (NRLA 2008), Albany Theatre, Antenna Studios, Stephen Lawrence Gallery and Royal Naval College in London. For more info, visit: www.carolinesmithonline.com

Sally Thompson explores a series of interconnecting theories and ideologies that overlay and provide a context for the evolutionary process of change evidenced by the building’s documented histories.

Senaka Weeraman presents a survey of the current condition of the building, capturing its state at this point of transition between industrial past and residential future.

For further information contact Linda Duffy on 07905 408 121 / lm_duffy@yahoo.com

Travel Underground: Elephant & Castle, London Bridge, Tower Hill, Tower Gateway National Rail: Elephant & Castle, London Bridge Bus: 1, 42, 188

55 Leroy St: Further Investigations is a project by The Space In-Between.

The Space In-Between is an umbrella for a series of experimental research and development projects. It aims to facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations that extend artistic practice and provide opportunities for artists and creative individuals to share new work with interested audiences.
For further information contact Linda Duffy on 07905 408 121 / lm_duffy@yahoo.com

shibboleth, participating in the crack at the tate modern....

now full of the world of participation,and other ways of exploring this, enjoyed watching and ear wigging on others interactions and discussions about this crack the whole length of the turbine hall. it seemed to be small children that were most eager to get their foot/head/ toy down inside it and be photographed. Would be good to go back and record this more. Looking at how people had recorded this on youtube, I found this i minute, walk the crack video- its weird but i would have started from entrance to back i.e. as crack opened up



From Tate website;

'Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth is the first work to intervene directly in the fabric of the Turbine Hall. Rather than fill this iconic space with a conventional sculpture or installation, Salcedo has created a subterranean chasm that stretches the length of the Turbine Hall. The concrete walls of the crevice are ruptured by a steel mesh fence, creating a tension between these elements that resist yet depend on one another. By making the floor the principal focus of her project, Salcedo dramatically shifts our perception of the Turbine Hall’s architecture, subtly subverting its claims to monumentality and grandeur. Shibboleth asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and the values it enshrines, and about the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built.'

participation in a new way, a public art piece you can get right inside, no red tape.

this link also talks about peoples interactions with what has the nickname doris's crack, saying one old lady fell down it as she thought it was painted on and about other casualties. it is interesting in a health and safety, risk assessment bonkers society that this work is so openly there to inadvertently fall into, a crack this size on a pavement would have huge barriers around it sealing it off, but i guess this also points to that obsession in our culture.

Contextual Connections- Peter Richards- Pinhole performances

ok- so following a cross-course tutorial in which the link between my thoughts on linking photography and performance was questioned (which has meant that, rightly so in retrospect,now i have to really get on with considerations in a much more direct way what this connection means, what is this world in between? and how is there a purposeful link between the act of recording and/or process of image making/ engagement with photograph as a performative act in some way to start to make connected work and try to avoid mis-communication) i have started more looking back at the work of others', exploring one aspect of my proposed learning agreement for traditional photography. i must also get on with camera lucida:) i have been looking at whether anyone else had been exploring this with particular reference to pinhole photography and performance, and so peter richards popped up. i remembered having seen a copy of this work a few years ago. although lengthy the text describing his work on his website shows his whole playful process of staging long pinhole exposures in various locations and various engagements with participants.this work was written in a fantastic account linking with a photo booth art work in joshua sofaers essay, conflict of interest: performance as a spectator sport he writes; 'the camera is the performative sculptural mechanism which facilitates the performance. The giant cardboard obscura ........ [is] site (as the stage in theatre) and source (the text - the actors) of the work.' I need to come back to this text, examining its realtion to camera lucida. i should also consider how this work connects with the ideas explored in our frenchmottershead participaton project.